Hi. I'm currently away for work and have with me a crappy old hp something or other running XP and a shiny new macbook. The hotel offers free wireless access in the lobby of which I'm more than happy to take advantage. The HP connected to the net in about 30 seconds flat. Fours hors of trying later and the macbook still wont connect with airport. So here I sit using this old laptop with my new one of no use and still sitting in my bag. What am I doing wrong?????????? Please someone help!!!!!!
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Please help wireless internet!
- Thread starter amf666
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Do you know what sort of security they use? Does it need a password? If it does, try putting a dollar sign ($) in front of the password. 
Check to make sure airport is on and then see if it finds the network and if it does you should be connected, if not, try going into system prefs and under network - airport change the "By default, join" to Automatic and see if you can get connected.
Not sure what kind of security they run. It doesnt require a username or password. The windows laptop searched for available network, I double clicked it to join and was away. Airport is on with the mac but still doesnt even see the network anymore. It did see it at first but refused to join, I seem to have made things worse by messing with it. When at home I used the network assistant to join to my wireless network and it worked first time but doesnt want to know on public networks.
Check the Network Prefs for your Airport and hit settings in the bottom left. Do you have the Join Open Networks set? Also have you tried Interference Robustness? Worth a shot although I doubt either of these will solve the problem. You have tweaked the network prefs right?
First of all find out which type of WiFi protocol they use, Airport only connects through 802.11b, if they have 802.11g right there is your problem. For example my wife just got a second hand Powerbook G4, with an Airport card. She went to the town centre to try it out (we live in Athens, Greece), and she just opened her machine and bang, she was in the network. Otherwise check your System Preferences in Sharing to make sure your firewall is not blocking the communication, just press stop and see if Airport finds the network.
Macinflux said:
What are you talking about, the airport (airport extreme) in macbooks is fully compatable with 802.11G networks.
Note that the Intel Macs have some issues with particular routers/WAPs. My iMac would not see the Verizon provided Westell 327W router I had been using AT ALL. I replaced it with a Linksys WRT54G and am running third party firmware on that.
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